the poison of malaria is due to like organisms, while a large number of other diseases are being similarly investigated.
As to cholera, the classic experiments of Thiersch, in 1853,[1] are well known. He inoculated fifty-six mice with cholera-discharges. Of these, forty-four sickened and fourteen died from choleraic diseases. In the same year two water companies in London experimented on 500,000 human beings, one of them inoculating its patrons with cholera-discharges through its impure water-supply. This one sickened thousands and killed 3,476 human beings, most of whom might have escaped had the lessons of Thiersch's fourteen mice been heeded. To ask the question, which was the more cruel, is to answer it.[2]
At present our strenuous efforts are all in one direction—viz., to study these microbes by the microscope, by clinical observation, and by experiments on animals, in order to find out their origin, causes, growth, and effects, and to discover by what means their deadly results may be avoided, or by what remedies, without harm to the patient, they may themselves be destroyed. Evidently these studies can not be tried on our patients. They must either be tried on animals or be abandoned.
The inoculation experiments of modern times have recently borne rich fruit in still another pestilential disease—yellow fever—whose ravages in this country are fresh in our minds. November 10, 1884, M. Bouley reported to the Paris Academy of Sciences[3] that, since 1880, M. Freire, of Rio Janeiro, had experimented on Guinea-pigs with the virus of yellow fever, and believed that he had been able to produce such attenuation of the virus that by vaccination he could secure immunity from this dreadful scourge. Following the experiments, he and Rabourgeon tested the results on themselves, some students of medicine, and employés. Later the Emperor Dom Pedro authorized two hundred wharf-laborers to be inoculated. All these, after a three days' mild attack, remained free from the pestilence, while their fellow-laborers, similarly exposed to the fever, were dying on every hand. If, in an epidemic, this still prove true, as there seems every probability it will, from the five hundred lives already saved, we can hardly estimate either the medical or the commercial advantages to this coun-
- ↑ John Simon, "Proceedings International Medical Congress," London, 1881.
- ↑ The population supplied by the Southwark and Vauxhall Company, in the epidemic of 1818-'49, died at the rate of 118 in each 10,000, and, in that of 1853-'54, at the rate of 130 per 10,000. Those supplied by the Lambeth Company died in 1848-'49 at the rate of 125 per 10,000, but having improved its water supply meantime, the death-rate, in 1853-'54, fell to 37 per 10,000.If Thiersch lived in England to-day, he would have to take out a license to kill his fourteen mice in the interests of humanity—a license possibly refused, or only to be obtained after the most vexatious delays. But any house-maid might torture and kill them with arsenic or phosphorus, or Thiersch might give them to a favorite terrier without the slightest interference, provided only it be not for a scientific or a humane object!
- ↑ "Medical News," November 29, 1884.
